“Luc. There aren’t even any pants on that rack.”
“Yeah. I can see that.” He clears his throat. “On the plus side, you’ve got great legs.”
I shoot him a look. “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“You could say thank you?”
“I could also say fuck you.” I elbow him in the ribs, hard. “I am not going to be on the cover of this magazine in a thong bikini.”
“You don’t have to wear a bikini if you don’t want to.” He walks over to the clothes, pulls out a hanger. “I mean, there are these charming Daisy Dukes you can wear instead.”
“That’s it. I am so out of here.” I turn toward the open doorway, prepared to flee, but I barely make it a couple steps before a woman I can only assume is Charlene breezes through it.
“You must be Cam,” she tells me with a warm smile that is in direct opposition to the bored glare Darla wore during our whole conversation. “I’m Charlene and I have to tell you I am a huge fan. Watching you at last year’s X Games was incredible. You were brilliant.”
“Thank you.”
That she’s a fan matters less at the moment than the fact that she seems eminently reasonable, and I feel myself relaxing just a little.
“Don’t thank me for telling the truth.” If possible her smile gets even wider. “Now, what do you say we pick out some kickass clothes for you before we call Gigi in to do your hair and makeup.”
“Gigi?”
My God, it’s like I’ve actually stepped into The Twilight Zone. Where else would I actually get the chance to meet a woman named Gigi, for God’s sake?
“She’s our makeup artist and hair stylist. But there’s no use letting her work on you until we know what your clothing style is going to be.”
“Definitely wouldn’t want that.”
My tongue is firmly in my cheek at this point, but if she notices, Charlene doesn’t say anything—which makes me feel bad. Unlike Darla, who seemed annoyed by my very existence, Charlene actually seems really nice and like she actually wants to help, which means I should totally try to cooperate with her.
My resolve lasts all of two minutes—or until Charlene starts pulling teeny tiny bikinis in ice cream sherbet colors off the rack.
“What do you think of this one?” she says, holding up a bright, raspberry-colored one. “It would look great with your peaches-and-cream complexion.”
For long seconds, I just stare at her, trying to figure out if she’s joking or not. When she continues to look back at me, with a perfectly pleasant, perfectly innocuous look on her face, I finally figure out that she’s being serious. In which case, I don’t know what to object to first—the color or the lack of fabric.
Behind me, Luc coughs a little, then clears his throat. I’m not sure if he’s covering horror or amusement at the idea of seeing me in a bathing suit like that, but either way, it does nothing for my already failing confidence.
“Cam isn’t really a pink girl,” he says after he gets his coughing fit under control.
“That’s a shame, but okay.” She puts it back on the rack. “Do you like any of these colors?” She holds up the other five suits she had chosen.
“Maybe the lime-green one—” Luc starts to say.
“I think there’s been some mistake.” I cut him off before he can actually talk her into that dental floss masquerading as a bathing suit. “I’m a snowboarder, not a surfer. I wear snowboarding pants and jackets, not—”
I gesture to the bikinis.
“Oh, believe me, Cam, we know exactly who you are. But we’re doing the cover plus a whole fashion layout in the back—kind of like a winter getaway kind of thing. Escape the snow. You know what I mean?”
“Not really, no. All my winter getaways are to places where there is snow.”
“Of course, of course. But it turns out all those snowboarding clothes don’t make for very interesting pictures.”
“Z and Ash were in full gear every time they were on the cover. And so was Marc last month and Travis the month before.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?”
She sighs heavily, looks to Luc for help, which just pisses me off.
“He’s not the one on the cover. I am. So talk to me. And I’m sorry, Charlene, I really am. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I don’t get why you want me in a bathing suit on the cover of a snowboarding magazine.”
Luc chokes again and I turn around, shoot him a glare. He steps back, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Cam. Surely you know that having you in skimpy clothes is going to sell a lot of copies of this magazine.”
For a second, I’m sure that she’s kidding. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know how the world works. I know that a number of big female athletes have posed in bathing suits for magazines, but they’re different than I am. They’ve got great bodies that fill out the bikinis, not to mention a ton of sex appeal.
I don’t have either of those things. All I’ve got is crazy hair and a talent for barging mountains. And since they really don’t seem interested in what I can do on a snowboard, I don’t know what I can offer them.
“That’s not my thing.” I tell her. “I don’t—I can’t—”
“Sure you can. Why don’t you look through what we’ve got here—”
“No, really. I can’t do that. I’m not a model. No one wants to see me in a bikini. No one—”
“Of course they do, Cam. Your cover is going to be one of the most popular of the year. I have a feel for these things. We just have to pick out some outfits that will wow Mac—which shouldn’t be hard. You have a great body, so anything will look good on you.”
I don’t. I really don’t. I have a functional body, one that’s lean and well muscled and strong enough to do tricks that a lot of guys can’t do. But that doesn’t mean I look good in a bathing suit. That doesn’t mean I want the whole world to see how flat-chested I am. Or how big my biceps are. And I hate that she’s standing there lying to me just to get me to do what she wants, no matter how humiliating it’s going to be for me.
“I can’t,” I tell her again, backing away from the rack. From her.
I don’t get far before I back straight into Luc, who steadies me with his hands on my waist. “It’s okay,” he tells me softly, leaning forward to all but whisper it in my ear.
But it’s not okay. It’s not okay at all.
To give her credit, Charlene seems to realize just how freaked out I am. Instead of pushing me, she puts the sexkinis back on the rack, then takes a couple steps toward the door. “Look, why don’t I give you a few minutes?” she says. “You can look through the clothes on your own, see if there’s anything you feel comfortable in. If there is, great.”
“And if there’s not?” I ask, already knowing that there’s no way I’ll find anything to wear in the selection they’ve presented me.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, okay? I’m just going to step out and close the door. Pick out whatever you want. Try it on. See what you think. And I’ll check back in a little while, okay?”
It’s not okay. None of this is okay. But I don’t know how to say that any more clearly than I already have, so I just nod and watch as she shoots me a smile before quietly closing the door.
I’m across the room in a heartbeat, snapping the lock into place. And then I’m whirling on Luc.
“I can’t do it!” I tell him. “I just can’t. You know I can’t. I’m not sexy. I’m not beautiful. There’s no way I can carry off those clothes—and no way in hell I’m going to try so that everyone out there can laugh at me. Or worse, so that they can actually put me on the cover and the whole world can laugh at me. It’s not going to happen.”
He holds a placating hand out to me. “Cam, let’s just calm—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I don’t want to calm down. I want to leave. I can’t do this. I can’t, Luc. I can’t.”
&nbs
p; Panic is welling up inside of me, making me shake. Making my chest hurt. Making it hard—so hard—for me to breathe.
“I’m going to kill Mitch. I swear to God, I’m going to kill him. He told me this would be easy. Told me they’d take a couple pictures of me being me.” I point at the skimpy bikinis on the front of the rack. “Those are not me being me. Those are like Cara Delevigne being me. I mean, I don’t even know how to get them on. I can’t do this. I can’t, I can’t, I—”
“Cam!” He grabs me then, wraps his hands around my upper arms as he pulls me up to my toes. “Look at me,” he tells me, voice firm and commanding. “Don’t look at the bikinis, don’t think about the bikinis, don’t worry about the fucking bikinis. Just look at me and breathe. Okay? Just breathe.”
I nod, but my anxiety doesn’t go away. Instead, it just builds and builds and builds until my chest is heaving like a locomotive and my lungs feel like they’re going to explode at any second.
Even his voice sounds far away and tinny as he calls my name. I’m in full-on freak-out mode—something that almost never happens to me—and though I’m trying to stop it, trying to get a grip, the panic just keeps getting worse.
“Cam. Cam. Cam!” Luc calls again and again. I try to answer him, but nothing comes out but huge gasps for air.
In the middle of a full-on panic attack now, I clutch at his chest. I tangle my fingers in the soft fabric of his shirt. I’m shaking so badly that I nearly rip a button off.
I think that’s what does it, what finally makes him figure out that I’m not going to be able to calm down on my own, because suddenly Luc snaps. He lifts me right off the floor, snarling, “wrap your legs around me!” just as his mouth slams down on mine.
Chapter 8
Luc
My brain stops working the second Cam wraps those long, gorgeous legs of hers around my waist. This is exactly what I tried not to have happen, exactly what I’ve been fighting against since I found her in my kitchen this morning. But now that it has—now that I have her back in my arms—I can’t even pretend that I’m sorry. Because when I pushed her away this morning, claimed that I didn’t have a condom, it wasn’t because I didn’t want her. It’s because I want her too much. Because I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. And now that she’s here, wrapped around me like a vine, I never want to let her go.
Which is the problem.
Still, I can’t leave her like this. All freaked out and hyperventilating and convinced she isn’t hot enough to wear a bikini on the cover of a magazine? As if. She’s so fucking sexy it’s all I can do not to get a hard-on every time I look at her—even when she’s covered from head to toe in snowboarding gear. So fucking sexy that if you added up all the time I’ve spent thinking about her naked or in something like that little lime-green bikini she was holding up earlier, I’d have years of my life back.
Cam shifts a little, trying to get closer, and I slide my hands under her ass to support her. Now that I’ve got her in my arms, the last thing I want to do is drop her. Or let her go.
“Cam, baby.” I rip my mouth from hers to say, “You’re going to look fucking amazing on that cover.”
I walk us slowly across the room until I’ve got her backed up against the wall. Her legs and arms are still twined around me, but at least now I have the leverage to do what I want with her. To do what she needs as much as I need it—though for totally different reasons.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her, pressing kisses to her mouth, her throat, the tops of her breasts. “And you totally turn me on.”
I slide my hands under her shirt, run them up and down her spine, tell her over and over again how hot she is. How much I want her. How fucking sexy she is and how fucking hard she gets me.
She shakes her head, says, “No, no, no” to every compliment I pay her, but now her breath is coming in a series of hot little pants that have nothing to do with panic. Her hands are tugging at my hair, her legs wrapped tight around my waist and all I can think is don’t lose it, don’t lose it, DON’TLOSEIT. Not yet. Not when I haven’t gotten her there yet.
But already I’m close, so close. Already I want nothing more than to bury myself inside her and feel her clench around me when I come.
With that thought in mind, I rip her shirt over her head. Slam her back against the wall. Swallow her cries as her bare skin hits the cold wall and she arches against me.
“I think you’re sexy as fuck,” I tell her, kissing my way down her neck to the hollow of her throat. It’s ridiculous how hot I find this little patch of her—then again, I find everything about Cam sexy. Especially the little clusters of freckles that dance across the edges of her collarbone. And the little mole on the outer curve of her left breast. And the soft pink of her nipples.
Fuck, I even think the scar she has on her shoulder is sexy. She got it when she tangled with a tree a couple years ago and ended up with a dislocated shoulder among other injuries. But the way she’d handled it—the way she’d been so chill and collected had been a turn-on in itself. As had the way she let me take care of her when she never lets anyone do that.
“Everything about you makes me hot,” I whisper against her skin. She moans a little, rocks her hips against mine and I see fucking stars at the feel of her pussy—warm and wet and welcoming—against the hard ridge of my cock. In self-defense, I grab her hip, press more firmly against her in a last-ditch attempt to hold her still as I continue to press wet, open-mouthed kisses down her neck and across her shoulder.
“The way your skin turns pink when you’re turned on.” I lick across the curve of first one breast and then the other.
“The way your nipples always harden before I even touch them.” I take one in my mouth, suck hard enough to have her gasping out my name.
“The broken, breathy sounds you make when you want me inside you.” I bite down gently, then lave my tongue around her areola as she lets loose with the sounds I just described.
“The way your hands rake down my back when I touch your pussy.” I slip a hand inside her sweats and circle her clit with my thumb.
She cries out then, a loud, desperate sound that has my dick leaking pre-cum and every nerve ending in my body standing on end.
I do it again, reveling in the way her hands clutch at my shoulders.
At the way her head rocks back and forth against the wall.
At the way her legs tighten around my hips and her fingernails dig into my skin as she begs, “Please, please, please.”
“Just looking at you makes me harder than I’ve ever been. And being inside you—” I thrust against the very heart of her at the same time I pinch her clit between my thumb and forefinger. “Being inside you makes me—”
I break off as she comes, her arms and legs and hands tightening around me as she brokenly calls my name.
“Fuck, Cam.” I keep my thumb on her clit, working her through it even as I slip two fingers inside of her because there is nothing, nothing, that I love more than the way she clenches around me. The way her body holds onto a part of me like she never, never wants to let it go.
I hold her there, pressed against the wall, until the tremors stop.
Until her breathing returns to normal and she sleepily opens her eyes.
Until she smiles at me and reaches a still shaking hand up to cup my cheek.
“You okay?” I ask her, pressing a kiss to the soft, tender spot where her shoulder meets her neck.
“More than okay.” She rocks her hips against me. Once, twice. Then again and again, until it’s all I can do to keep from coming in my pants like a fucking fourteen-year-old. “But you didn’t—”
I slam my mouth down on hers, cut her off with a kiss. Because if I hear her say the word come right now, there’s no way I’m going to keep it together. No way I’m not going to pull her sweats down and shove myself inside her. No way I’m not going to fuck her and fuck her and fuck her, until neither one of us can breathe, let alone stand and talk and funct
ion.
She kisses me back, bites at my lip, thrusts her tongue deep in my mouth to tangle with mine. I groan, try to step back so that she can slide to the floor—and I can die of sexual frustration. But it’s already been a good fifteen minutes since her stylist left. The last thing I want is them walking in on us while we’re making love.
Except as I try to lower her back to the ground, Cam gasps, “No!” And then her hands are fumbling with my belt, her fingers unbuttoning and unzipping my jeans.
“Cam—” It’s all I can say, all I can think, as her hand closes around my rock hard dick. Cam, Cam, Cam—
“Fuck me, Luc. Please.”
Her voice is breathless, her eyes pleading as she starts to jack me off, her thumb rubbing back and forth over my tip. I’m so turned on and I know if I leave her to it—if I let her keep doing this for much longer—I’m going to blow like a fucking teenager with his first girl. Then again, when I was a teenager I’d wanted nothing more than for Cam to be my first girl.
My only girl.
The thought takes me higher and I can feel my orgasm starting in my back, can feel the heat gathering right at the base of my spine and working its way through my dick—through my drawn-up balls.
I try one more time to pull away, to set her down before I forget where we are and what we’re doing here. Before I forget everything but how hot she is and how much I fucking want to be inside her and—
“No!” Cam wraps one hand around my hip, cups my ass in her palm. Her other hand is on my dick, lining me up at her entrance so that all I have to do is take a deep breath and I’ll be inside her.
I hold my breath, try to stay completely still. But it’s so hard, so fucking hard, when everything I want—everything I’ve ever wanted—is spread right in front of me for the taking.
“Luc, please. I need you,” she tells me, those beautiful moss green eyes of hers fuzzy and a little wet as they stare imploringly into mine. “IneedyouIneedyouIneedyouIneedyouIne—”